FootprintsintheWind.com

What could we improve?

:- Doug.

The trouble with politics as usual (and therefore much of our common conception of debate and public intercourse) is that it derives in dualistic thinking: us vs them. Machiavelli is alive and well; so is competition. When we move beyond, then more is possible. This is the role of conversation: to move us beyond seeing others as other.

:- Doug.

We need both to find the beauty and the best “How”–both right and left brains—to truly meet.

:- Doug.

When we yield, to whom do we yield? Not so much to the other but to the in between, the one who arises in the center. This is the fear of conversation: that we yield, we are not in control, someone else might change us without our input. But our input is always there, potential or actual as we choose.

:- Doug.

If G*d is dynamic, then G*d is yielding to us as we yield to G*d. Hence the dry skin on the dewy field, saving the city if only 100 or 10 or 1 are found, the nevertheless prayer.

:- Doug.

Perhaps we do not live on an I-It to I-Thou continuum, rather a circle or a spiral, and we travel through these ways of standing with the world hour by hour, sometimes in the It side, other times in the You world, and many times in between.

:- Doug.

What could it mean that conversation is dynamic?

:- Doug.

We think we are delimited by other persons around us: my rights end where your nose begins. In actuality we are extended by those around us when we meet. We become larger as we allow others in.

At least as much as we shrink. It might depend upon the character of the meeting: if we meet with negative intent (this might be I-It), then we shrink; if with I-You, then we have the capacity to expand. And if we meet with G*d we surely expand.

:- Doug.

The best conversations can be just being with.

:- Doug.

Ask not only What conversations need to happen, but What conversations could happen? What conversations would be good to happen? Conversation could break out here.

:- Doug.

Question seeds; story seeds: plant.

:- Doug.

Reading in Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I came across a long conversation he has with people he is staying with, after a dinner party. I find myself wondering when I have ever had such a conversation where we go really deep into a subject. Perhaps in college once or twice (but I did not feel part of the conversations, usually) and once or twice with Michael Herman in the evenings of some open space events. It occurred to me that most conversations do not go as deep as even the writing I am doing on these pages, let alone the depth of a Buber book or Pirsig. Pirsig raises the question in his soliloquy of getting to the roots of logic, rather than its branches, to create whole new ways of thinking. It occurred to me then that conversation is that root: we can evolve new ways of thinking, to say nothing of new kinds of people. So going a step further, I saw that we have need of both kinds of thinking: solo and together. The together kind grafts the ideas together that they might bear fruit; the solo kind allows us to go deeper and have some real meat and nourishment to the ideas; then we go together again to help us bridge the gaps and cross the chasms and obstacles on the way. It is a kind of respiration, perhaps. Thinking solo we can go deep and wide; small groups can help us go wider (but often not as deeply) and also focus the ideas to the realm of working together—what is possible, practical, exciting; large groups can help us transfer the excitement and see bigger pictures.

Is this all there is to be said of the matter? For one thing, we need not then worry so much that conversation does not go deep. It will go more deeply, it will connect more, if we open ourselves to that possibility, if we speak what is on our hearts and minds. We need to see it for what it offers and work within that: connecting people and ideas; bridging gaps and obstacles; viral activity.

:- Doug.

There is a purpose to conversation and that is evolution. What is evolution about? To get to the third side. To grow. To become better. To become more inclusive. To see what we can do and whom we can be.

I do not see how to break it down any more finely than that. It could be put more eloquently.

This really is what it is about for me, it seems this morning: to see what good we can do, to see whom we can be. Conversation is the evolutionary, emerginary tool. It is perhaps the only tool we have, this meeting. We live in an emerging world.

:- Doug.

When you and I converse….

:- Doug.

The more we get people together, the more we see, the more we do. We meet, we see, we do, we evolve.

:- Doug.

Loose connectings, looking laterally, fuzzy logic, common endeavor: what do we have? We have creating, changing, emerging, transforming, evolving: conscious evolution.

:- Doug.

The number of possible solutions—loosenings—that any group can produce is infinite. The number an individual can produce is less, but still infinite, given ample time. The group reduces the time and expands the number of solutions. The group increases the likelihood that action will arise from the solutions produced.

:- Doug.

Approach others not as if fighting against the system and its perpetrators, but as working with a friend to find the way.

Enlist the others in the evolution.

:- Doug.

Emergence of persons: this is significant. It is persons emerging from the meeting. It is persons who are whole, complete, and therefore engaged in their lives and world. It is persons engaged in our evolution. Persons emerging.

I am person emerging. I emerge most wholly from meeting, because I am freely fully contributed and we are fully engaged. Life is emerging, through you and me.

:- Doug.

We have a need in this universe to both love and hate, both attract and repel. What we don’t need is the war between them and the extra heat of feeling bad about the conflict. Conflict is necessary. Pulling and pushing are both necessary. Some­thing that will not budge is necessary—maybe to grow our muscles, maybe to keep our muscles in tune, maybe to give us impetus to try harder or to decide when enough is enough and go on to something more important. Maybe a hundred other reasons. How do we know till we get to the other side? And maybe even then we still will not yet know.

:- Doug.

Love, relation, attraction, whoosh—all are names for the same phenomenon: drawing together of beings one to the others in the world there is.

:- Doug.

There’s not a problem in the world that people acting together cannot solve.

There is not an opportunity that persons together cannot create and make happen.

The only thing that ever has worked has been a small group of people doing.

:- Doug.

I do not wish to contend and argue. To argue is to lose—for one if not both. Better to ask questions, to gather out the other’s stories. Explore. Find a person.

:- Doug.